Santa's Elves
by the ramblin rose
Summary: Caryl, AU, Oneshot. It was Christmas morning and, somehow, they had forgotten to wrap the presents. They were just going to have to make like Santa's Elves and handle things. Set in the universe of "All the King's Horses," but you don't really have to have read that story to enjoy this one.


**AN: I had an anon who wanted "Christmas wrapping" in the universe for "All the King's Men." Here you are! You really don't even have to have read the story to enjoy it. It does not follow the timeline, exactly, of the longer story. It's just a little oneshot for entertainment purposes. I hope you enjoy! **

**I own nothing from the Walking Dead, but I do own All the King's Men.**

**Don't forget to let me know what you think! **

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"What the hell do you mean we ain't wrapped all of this shit?"

Daryl heard himself as he growled out the words. Worse than hearing himself—and honestly being ashamed of the bite in his own damn tone—he could see it on Carol's face. She was red-eyed and her eyes were swollen. It was difficult to tell if it came from crying, lack of sleep, or both.

And if she wasn't crying, she would be probably be crying soon.

"How the hell do we just not wrap all of this? How the hell do we just—forget—to wrap all this shit until…until NOW? Carol—it's four-thirty. You know they ain't, not one of 'em, gonna be asleep another whole half an hour!"

The words kept rolling out of his mouth in that same disagreeable tone, even though he wanted them to stop. He didn't want to say what he was saying, but still it happened.

It was Christmas morning and he'd been woken, abruptly and somewhat rudely, with Carol's frantic declarations that they hadn't wrapped the Christmas presents. The realization had woken her from whatever she sleep she might have had the night before or, perhaps, it had simply come to her while she'd been caring for their youngest. They had, somehow, forgotten to wrap the pile of toys, trinkets, and clothing that they'd amassed for their cobbled together brood of three.

And he wanted to be mad about it because mad, at the moment, felt easier to handle than the stressed feeling of panic that came over him when he thought about disappointing his whole family on their first Christmas morning as a full-sized and official family.

But he stopped himself. He stared at his red-faced wife as she stood in front of him and held their sleeping month old baby girl. Aubrey had possibly the worst case of colic known to man and she'd cried from practically the moment she was born. She was just starting to get over it, or so it seemed, and her crying hours were lessening. Her doctor assured them she was fine and, eventually, she'd stop crying—but there were days that, even with the number of hours she cried lessening from what seemed like twenty-four all the way down to twenty—Daryl wondered if her mother would survive until the colic passed.

Because Carol stayed up with her so that Daryl could sleep because he needed to sleep for work. Carol stayed home with the children, and she drove them to school, and she drove Russ to his little practices and activities to try to find a way to expend some of his excess energy, and she handled cooking for family get-togethers, and she handled things around the house—all like she wasn't exhausted. She handled it all with a smile on her face.

She even let Daryl grumble to her because it would be, at the very least, another two weeks before any of the sexual tension that he felt building up on a daily basis could be relieved by more than the work of her hands or her mouth.

And she did all that, too, with a smile.

His stomach flipped at the sight of her standing in front of him—her ill-fitting and well-worn nightgown somewhat stretched over a stomach that hadn't entirely disappeared from the time she'd spent carrying their beautiful, miserable, colicky baby girl. She had on mismatched socks that Daryl were almost certain were his and the front of that very gown showed signs that she was leaking milk because Aubrey needed to eat soon, but she was reluctant to ever wake the child when she finally succumbed to sleep.

And the thing that hurt him the most was the look on her face. He hated the way her chin drooped forward and down. He hated the way she looked like she was almost prepared to duck her head in shame. He hated that look of apology and sadness over having let him down in some way.

She had bought most of these things. He'd let her buy most of the presents because she was so good at presenting herself as super woman that, sometimes, he forgot she was just a human being.

"Jesus," he said to himself as much as he said it to her. "I'm an asshole. And I'm damned sorry for it." He stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her, careful not to disturb the sleeping infant in her arms.

"No, you're not," Carol breathed out. "You're not an asshole."

"Yes, I am!" Daryl insisted.

"You're right, about the presents," Carol said. "Who the hell forgets to wrap the Christmas presents until…oh…Daryl!"

"Shhh…" Daryl insisted. "It's fine. It's OK. It ain't nothin' but a thing. An' it weren't your job to remember every damn thing about this whole season. So, we're just gonna wrap the presents an' haul 'em out an' put 'em under the tree. End of story. Nothin' else to worry about."

"You said it yourself," Carol protested. "They're going to be up before we can finish."

"Then we gotta be smart about it," Daryl said. He laughed to himself. "This ain't nothin' but a thing. Can you put her down?"

"She'll wake up the moment I do," Carol said. "You know that."

"Then you work one-handed," Daryl said. He began to organize the present pile on the floor. He gathered the wrapping paper and other supplies from the closet where Carol had tucked it away, meaning to use it long before today, and he found the scissors. He sat down on the floor and started his work. "You gonna hold the paper when I ask. Pass me presents. Put on the tape. We gonna be just like Santa's Elves. And when the kids get up—'cause we know they gonna be up—you gonna just get 'em breakfast an' run interference."

Carol already looked relieved and she lowered herself to the floor, carefully, and started doing her best to wrap items one-handed. Action and a plan—no matter how poorly made it might be—seemed to soothe over a multitude of feelings for her.

"I'm sorry," Daryl offered. "I think—I put too much on you. You're so good at handlin' everything…I think I forget, sometimes, how heavy it can all be, especially if you're doin' it by yourself."

"You've handled plenty by yourself," Carol offered, alluding to the four years that Daryl had spent raising their son, Russ, as a single father.

"All the more reason why I oughta pay more attention," Daryl said.

"You help me so much," Carol said. "Every day."

"But not enough," Daryl said. "And—I feel like maybe I been neglectin' you a little lately. No matter what you say. So—for that? My gift to you is that, once we get these presents wrapped, you don't gotta do nothin' else today. Except—maybe—you know, take care of Aubrey. You got everything I don't got, an' she won't take a bottle for nothin'."

Carol laughed to herself.

"Thanks," she said softly. "But—Daryl?" He hummed in response and chucked his wrapped present to the side to make room for the next one to be wrapped. "I hope you got me more than that."

Daryl laughed to himself.

"I did," he said. "But—I ain't wrapped it."

"You don't have to wrap it," Carol said. "I won't mind."

"Yeah, but I will," Daryl said.

"We don't have to wrap anything for Aubrey," Carol said, struggling to wrap a robotic dinosaur that would probably ruin their lives and deprive them of any sleep that they might have gotten otherwise. "She won't know the difference."

"Yeah, but the kids will," Daryl said. "And it won't take Russ two and a half minutes to figure out that her presents not bein' wrapped means she's the bad kid or something. We don't take no chances. Everything for every one of them gets wrapped—and it all gets wrapped in our special, not-used-for-anything-else straight-from-the-North-Pole wrapping paper."

Carol giggled. It had been Daryl's idea to buy the special wrapping paper to make sure that there was a bit more magic to the Santa delivered gifts. He'd been doing it every year since Russ could understand what presents from Santa even were.

"What do we do with what's left over?" Carol asked.

"If there's any left over," Daryl offered, "we burn it. Because I don't want him figurin' it out, and Russ has got a memory like an elephant for anything that's inconvenient."

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At the thirteenth round of knocking at the door in about as many minutes, Daryl growled to himself.

"Russel Dixon—I am on the phone with Santa Clause right now!" Daryl called through the door. "An' if you don't go in there an' eat the sausage an' special waffles your Mama made for you right now, he's done said he will turn that sleigh around an' head on back to the North Pole right now, an' he won't never—not never—deliver another present to this household for the rest of eternity. And that's a long time, Russ!"

"But Daddy—I just…"

Before Russ could ask Daryl another inane question through the door, or before he could complain, once again, about how inconvenient it was that Santa had had to get in touch with Daryl super early in the morning to let him know that they'd had sleigh troubles, and that he'd required Daryl's help—holed up in the bedroom while Carol fed the kids a special Christmas breakfast at an ungodly hour and let them put on a stop-motion animation Christmas film to entertain them—to talk his elves through the careful mechanical repairs of the sleigh before they could magically bring the gifts to the house, Sophia clearly reacted to the threat that her brother had caused.

Daryl heard some thumping around outside that sounded like a scuffle. It was followed by a loud thud which left Russ howling loudly about being injured practically, from the sounds of it, to the point of death. That was followed by the distant howling of Aubrey—which was really background noise to the rest of their lives—and the sound of Carol scraping up the remains of their son and offering some comfort while she scolded Sophia and told her that children who couldn't behave could very well see Santa dropping off coal instead of presents.

Sophia must have been outside the door. There was no other way to explain the sound of something thudding against the door, sliding slowly down it, and landing on the floor. The loud howling almost made Daryl laugh while simultaneously tugging at his heart.

"Noooo…my baby…" Sophia howled. "My baby!"

The night they had gone to see Santa at the mall—a nightmare all its own—they had taken the kids for a trip through the toy aisle to get some ideas for Christmas presents. Sophia had fallen in love—since there was really no other explanation for what had taken place—with a baby doll that Daryl had honestly thought was much uglier than all the other babies on display. With true mother's eyes, though, Sophia had seen nothing but the blinding beauty of that hideous baby, and she'd begged for it so pathetically that an old woman passing by had offered to buy it for her if Carol and Daryl weren't buying it for some financial reason.

Carol had shuffled all their offspring out to the food court to get them hot chocolate and special late-night cookies while Daryl had made the purchases—the ugly doll among them—and had taken them out to the car to hide them under a blanket in the back of the minivan.

Sophia had only slept that night—and every single night since—with the constant reminder that Santa would bring her the doll if she was very, very good. She had been working overtime, in fact, to make sure that Russ—and even Merle's Tweedles—were well-behaved so that Santa would hold nobody's sins against her and deny her the ugliest baby that Daryl had ever seen.

He'd only just wrapped the doll moments before. Sophia had waited for it with the dogged patience of any mother awaiting a brand-new baby, and her heartbreak outside the door was very real.

She had probably clocked Russ for his bad behavior. She may have even wrestled him to the floor and sat on him—something she did a lot when trying to police his over-activity.

She was a mother, after all, fighting for the future of her ugly child.

"Soph," Daryl called out, "it's OK. I'm on the phone with Santa now. Said he's gonna bring your toys even if he don't bring Russ's. Says you just gotta stop cryin', OK? Because we got enough cryin' around here an' you gotta go eat your breakfast. Keep away from the door 'cause he don't want y'all hearin' the elves when they bringin' the toys in through the window an' he says any indication of y'all peekin' or listenin' an' he's turnin' right around. So, you just—go watch your movie an' eat your breakfast. Help your Ma with Aubrey."

The wailing outside the door tapered off and stopped. Daryl heard the sound of Sophia pushing herself up, and he heard the familiar slapping sound of her slightly over-sized bear bedroom slippers slapping on the kitchen floor as she rushed back toward the living room.

It sounded like most of the crying was done in the living room, except for Aubrey's, and Daryl scanned the pile. He had only a few more to go before he could proudly tell his family that Santa's Elves had finished—as he'd told them they would—chucking the presents from Santa's expertly, and magically, hidden sleigh into the bedroom window.

To make his lie a little more believable, Daryl went and opened the bedroom window wide. He left it that way while he finished wrapping the presents and placing them into the pile.

He wanted Russ—his greatest skeptic by far—to feel the chill of Christmas when he came to scrutinize the pile and to try and steal some kind of final glimpse of Santa's sleigh as it drove away, cloaked in super-secret North Pole magic, for the final leg of Santa's journey home.

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The best part of Christmas was sitting with one arm cradling Aubrey while the other arm wrapped around Carol's shoulder as she somewhat napped against him. It was watching Russ as he terrorized a Lego village with a robotic dinosaur that was sure to drive them all crazy before long. It was watching Sophia as she carefully tended a very ugly doll that she insisted was "bootie-ful" and who needed to be fed and changed—alternating between the two actions—every two and a half minutes.

"You did it," Carol said, breathing out the words so that only Daryl could really hear her. It wouldn't matter what the kids heard, anyway, if they heard it in code. They would assume she was talking about talking Santa through the repairs on his sleigh so that the presents could be magically delivered.

"You done it," Daryl said. "Breakfast an' keepin' everything around here settled. Keeping everyone happy. And you do that every day. Superwoman."

"I didn't do anything except—what I would normally do," Carol said.

"That's my point," Daryl said. "Like I said, superwoman."

"I couldn't do any of it without you," Carol assured him. "Without your help."

"Then we both did it," Daryl said. "And that's how the hell we'll just—handle everything."

"Promise?" Carol asked softly, her voice lagging just a bit and making Daryl sure that it would barely be a matter of minutes before she closed her eyes and did her best to snag a ten- or fifteen-minute nap among the chaos of their everyday lives. Daryl flexed his arm to hug her just a fraction of an inch closer to him, and he rubbed her arm affectionately.

"Promise," he assured her. "Today and every day."


End file.
